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Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

(rosenzweig.io)
838 points alsetmusic | 4 comments | 27 Aug 25 01:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.6s | source
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Tiberium ◴[27 Aug 25 02:54 UTC] No.45034962[source]▶
Sorry to hijack, but since the topic is related: is the development of Asahi Linux still actively ongoing, or has slowed down a lot? The progress for M1 and M2 was steady and now almost everything is done, but the M3+ work still seems to not have started. And with major contributors leaving the project I'm kind of worried for the future of Asahi (on newer Apple hardware).
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Tiberium ◴[27 Aug 25 03:04 UTC] No.45035023[source]▶
Found out from some Reddit discussions that the developers aim to first upstream everything for M1/M2 to the kernel, and as of https://asahilinux.org/2025/08/progress-report-6-16/:

> With Linux 6.16, we also hit a pretty cool milestone. In our first progress report, we mentioned that we were carrying over 1200 patches downstream. After doing a little housekeeping on our branch and upstreaming what we have so far, that number is now below 1000 for the first time in many years, meaning we have managed to upstream a little over 20% of our entire patch set in just under five months. If we discount the DCP and GPU/Rust patches from both figures, that proportion jumps to just under half!

So if the discussions are true, it can take years for the developers to finish M1/M2 upstreaming with all the Linux kernel bureaucracy. That is, unless they decide to start working on M3 before finishing the upstreaming

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laweijfmvo ◴[27 Aug 25 03:14 UTC] No.45035086[source]▶
i hope some day a used M1/M2 macbook air will be the greatest linux laptop around
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1. rc00 ◴[27 Aug 25 05:22 UTC] No.45035727[source]▶
I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel. Forget the hostile nature Apple has proven to possess when consumers dare treat their hardware as if paying for it makes it their own.

Qualcomm has been beating the marketing drum on this instead of delivering. Ampere has delivered excellent hardware but does not seem interested in the desktop segment. The "greatest Linux laptop around" can not be some unmaintained relic from a hostile hardware company.

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2. finaard ◴[27 Aug 25 07:52 UTC] No.45036681[source]▶
As somebody that has worked in a company that did Qualcomm devices in the past - Qualcomm just cares about money grabbing, and is not any less hostile to developers than Apple.

If you want to do a device, and your only chip option is Qualcomm I'd recommend not doing a device at all.

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3. zozbot234 ◴[27 Aug 25 08:03 UTC] No.45036751[source]▶
FLOSS stacks for Qualcomm-based devices are actually a lot more feature complete than some other brands like MediaTek or Exynos. Still nowhere near any kind of "daily driver" status but at least getting somewhere, whilst others have yet to even get started.
4. lostlogin ◴[27 Aug 25 09:40 UTC] No.45037342[source]▶
> I would hope not. That would mean that no other vendor has shipped working ARM hardware support for Linux or has upstream support in the kernel.

Can you see any other machine coming close to a Mac in terms of hardware quality and performance? Obviously the cost is silly, but while I agree with your sentiment, it seems optimistic to hope.